Senate: Cantwell plays safe, Baumgartner seeks recognition

She has been an aggressive, impatient, hands-on critic of Wall Street as a legislator in Washington, D.C., but Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is doing her best to keep out of controversy’s way and run out the clock in this Washington while seeking re-election to a third term.

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“We’ve been together only once,” said opponent State Sen. Mike Baumgartner of Spokane, referring to an editorial board appearance at The Herald in Everett last week.

So far, Cantwell has consented to just one debate, which will be seen on public television station KCTS-TV at 7 p.m. on Friday night. Even super-safe, 78-year-old Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has agreed to two public debates with his Democratic opponent.

The state’s voters deserve better. In fact, both Cantwell and Baumgartner are worthy of more public exposure, and more public attention.

Baumgartner brings to the table an unusual resume. He attended Harvard’s Kennedy School, served as an economics officer with the State Department in Iraq, and was adviser to an Afghanistan counter-narcotics team in Helmand Province.

Baumgarter is running to the left of the Obama administration and Cantwell on the winding-down of the Afghanistan War. He wants out quickly, seeing U.S. objectives as muddled and unattainable. He faults Cantwell for her controversial vote in the Senate in favor of “a poorly planned war in Iraq.”

“We should, as soon as possible, change strategy in Afghanistan and bring the troops out . . . Afghanistan is going to revert to its normal status as a warlord-laden area of semi-autonomous centers of power,” said Baumgartner. He argues that the U.S. should forget all pretense of building a democracy, and maintain a small force of 5-10,000 troops “to block trans-national terrorist groups.”

Baumgartner

Cantwell neutralized her pro-Iraq War vote in her last re-election campaign. An anti-war Democratic challenger abruptly withdrew from the race and became an “adviser” to the incumbent’s re-election campaign.

Cantwell has enjoyed a productive second term in the Senate. She used a seat on the Senate Finance Committee to fight for strong oversight of Wall Street — particularly the trade in derivatives — and a consumer protection agency with genuine power.

Spurred on by the Great Recession, and the meltdown of financial institutions, she has called for restoration of the “Glass Wall” provisions of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, repealed in the late 1990s. Glass-Steagall limited commercial banks’ involvement in securities trading, and links between banks and securities firms.

Cantwell fought to incorporate innovations and efficiencies in patient care, pioneered in Washington and Minnesota, into the Affordable Care Act. She has held the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s feet to the fire to honestly evaluate dangers that a huge proposed gold and copper mine would pose to the salmon fishery of Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

And, quietly, Cantwell has raised money at a $1.2 million-a-quarter clip over the past two years — with a break only to climb the Grand Teton in Wyoming. The advantage is allowing her to dominate the airwaves, and discouraging Republicans from recruiting — and financing — a front-rank contender.

Baumgartner is blunt about his disadvantage. “The majority of voters this side of the state don’t know me, in part because of the reluctance of Senator Cantwell to engage,” he said in an interview.

Cantwell was never a gregarious politician to begin with, and becomes almost reclusive at election time. She is prickly for even staff to deal with. Seattlepi.com was promised, months ago, an opportunity to spend a day in the field with Cantwell. The trip never materialized.

Cantwell publicizes an occasional official tour of a shipyard or port facility, but otherwise publishes no itineraries for the press to pick up and cover. Aside from one pool report, Northwest media were barred from covering Vice President Joe Biden’s appearance for Cantwell in July.

Amazingly, while it makes a big thing out of ill-advised tweets by campaign staffers, the state’s political press has had very little to say about Cantwell’s elusiveness.

Baumgartner has made stumbles along the trail. Cantwell signed a critical letter to the Food & Drug Administration, arguing that the Plan B “morning after” birth control pill should be sold over the counter at drugstores to women of all ages.

In an appeal for money, Baumgartner said Cantwell wasn’t qualified to speak on the subject because she is unmarried and has voted to “undermine the role of parents in child rearing . . . Cantwell is so extreme that she doesn’t see anything wrong with 11-year-old girls getting Plan B without a prescription.”

The reference to Cantwell’s marital status was not well received. Baumgartner dances around the abortion-contraception issue, saying: “As a Catholic, I believe that life begins at conception — that is my faith tradition — but I am not running on social issues.”

He has voted for state budgets that included money for Planned Parenthood clinics, “but I haven’t liked that aspect of it.”

Baumgartner has taken stands left and right. He has endorsed Initiative 502, which would legalize, regulate and tax the growth and sale of marijuana in Washington.

Baumgartner is, however, critical of any partial fix to the immigration problem. He takes a dim view of the Dream Act, an originally bipartisan proposal that would offer a path to citizenship for young people originally brought to the U.S. by parents, who go to college or serve in the U.S. armed forces.

“The threshhold of the Dream Act is not high enough,” he said. “One year of community college is not enough . . . No, I do not support the Dream Act.”

Republicans and their SuperPACs poured money into the 2010 Senate race in a bid to defeat Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. CrossroadsGPS, a secretive group co-founded by Bush guru Karl Rove, spent $5.5 million. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce poured in $997,000 at the last minute.

The GOP has other fish to fry this year. The Republican Governors Association has poured in $7.3 million to support Attorney General Rob McKenna’s bid for governor. By contrast, Baumgartner last been left pretty much to fend for himself.

He gets the chance to make his case Friday on statewide TV. Otherwise, Cantwell is showing how advantages of money and incumbency can carry even the least garrulous of incumbent officeholders.